Do the saints in Heaven not care what happens to those who suffer in Hell forever?

Christianity teaches that at death you go to spend eternity in Heaven or Hell - just one or the other. Catholics hold that you may have to spend some time in Purgatory but if you go there your Heavenly Destiny is assured. How can you be happy in Heaven if anybody is suffering in Hell? Does their suffering increase your happiness for you are gloating? Or do you not care?
 
THE SAINTS DON’T CARE WHAT HAPPENS TO THE DAMNED BE IT BAD OR GOOD.

Many theologians allege that the saints are able to be happy in Heaven because they don’t give a damn about the people in Hell and neither love them or hate them.  They are said to be indifferent. Supporters talk as if it is a grand thing that the saints are apathetic and as if callousness is better than hatred. Indifference is worse than hate for it is the opposite of love not hate. There is some concern in hate but there is none in indifference.
 
They say that the saints see what happens to the damned as good and are neither happy or distressed about it for that reason. St Augustine stated that the objection against eternal punishment that it means that evil will last forever and never be overcome would be valid and correct but for one fact, the damned freely choose evil and to punish freely chosen evil is good so Hell expresses the triumph of good over evil under the circumstances (page 71, The Enigma of Evil). He said Hell being entirely their own fault was the reason God and the saints could have unsullied happiness despite the suffering of those lost in Hell forever. Aquinas went a step further and said that the suffering of Hell increases the happiness of the saints for they are so relieved that they are in Heaven and not going through all that the damned are that it compounds their happiness (page 72, The Enigma of Evil). But good does not triumph over evil by punishing it for suffering and sin are still there and haven’t been eradicated. Punishment is not good but a necessary evil in this world being the way it is. But it cannot be necessary in the supernatural and magical afterlife.
 
Some say the saints don’t give a toss about the damned because the damned are punishing themselves and are not punished by God. When a person does wrong that person asks for punishment whether they want the punishment or not. But it is not true that a person punishes themselves. A murderer has to go to prison to be punished by the state. It is not enough if the murderer voluntarily goes into seclusion at a hermitage and wears a hair shirt for life. So you cannot punish yourself. Punishing has to take away your freedom first of all. If freedom is there it is not punishment. We speak of people punishing themselves but we should say they are torturing themselves not punishing themselves.
 
If people punish themselves then this cannot be good. Real punishment comes from outside. You may ask for it but you don’t want it and have to endure it against your will. If people punish themselves they are in control and are indulging their own will so it is not really punishment. The doctrine that Hell is self-inflicted from the start and that makes it good so God didn’t fail though better could have happened as taught by Augustine and Aquinas is nonsensical.
 
These two theologians were condoning and blessing and glossing over evil and calling it good. Since they admitted that God wants to eradicate all evil they had to claim that the damned freely stay in Hell which is a complete contradiction for God must have done something to the damned to keep them in Hell. When Aquinas who followed most of the lies of St Augustine was and is Roman Catholicism which could be called the religion of Thomism it follows that doctrines seriously defective from the point of view of right and wrong and lacking in sensitivity have been fused into Roman Catholicism for most of its history. If you believe in eternal punishing you have to believe that this useless punishment is a good thing like the two cruel saints said. So death must be good too for Christianity says it is punishment for sin. If so we should not mourn the dead but carry on the same way as the saints do in relation to the damned. These attitudes are unkind and since they follow from belief in God it follows that theism is a crime against humanity.

Religion says that if we are forced to kill somebody perhaps to stop that person killing people we should not rejoice in it but in the courage that led us to do this necessary thing. It follows then that the saints should rejoice in their indifference if it is the only attitude possible for them. It is clear that there must be indirect hatred for the damned in their rejoicing. It is like rejoicing over your cleverness in robbing the bank but not in your avarice. It would be hypocrisy for one was as much behind the crime as the other.
 
Indifference is willing evil just like hate is when it lets evil happen. Indifference is willing both bad and good. Love is willing good and hate is ill will. If hating the damned is bad so is having no concern for them. In fact, the latter would be worse.

An indifferent attitude among the saints would mean they approve if the damned are kept in Hell or released. But if they should be in Hell it is a sin to be ready to let them be freed. Indifferentism, then, is opposition to God who wills that they remain in Hell. Real saints don’t turn against God.

Hatred is bad for it is a denial of the value of the person. The same goes for indifference for it is too but it goes further. It is wicked superstition to say that hate is bad and the other is good for if looking upon a person as nothing is evil then it is always evil.

When the saints choose not to care they are choosing to do something evil. Indifference is indifference but choosing to be apathetic is an act of hate for it is evil. Thus, it is sheer nonsense to claim that it is better to be indifferent than to hate. The indifference is not hate but hates puts it in you. Hate is better for it has its limits while indifferentism approves if a person suffers extremely forever. Hate is better because it is one declaration that the person is considered worthless while indifference is this one and another.
 
Can one argue that the saints must not care if the damned get unjustly treated and that it is possible for them to be against this and not care about the suffering the damned deserve. So they do not care if the damned suffer their due but more than that they do care. The Church says that demons and the denizens of Hell torment and abuse one another too. So it is clear that people must get worse than they deserve in Hell. This cannot be reconciled with the happiness of Heaven.
 
You are supposed to punish or approve punishment reluctantly or because there is no better way. People suffering for a purpose is to be seen as a necessary evil to be despised. People suffering unnecessarily is to be more despised. To say that the saints don’t give a monkies is to say that they are evil and despicable.
 
It is evil to be glad about or indifferent to deserved suffering too though it is worse to be like that with regard to undeserved. It would be wrong to forbid one and allow the other.
 
Question 1011, Radio Replies 1 (Fathers Rumble and Carty, Radio Replies Press, St Paul Minnesota, 1938) states that if a mother is in Heaven and her son in Hell she will be so wrapped up and absorbed in loving God that her natural feelings for her son will vanish is really advocating indifferentism. It says that Christ loves the son more than she ever did and he is not upset so there must be a solution to the seeming contradiction. Answers such as that are just an insulting cop-out. It is like saying that John is the most honest person alive and yet there is strong evidence that he stole. It is totally contradictory and dressed up to look like it makes sense when it doesn't.
 
THE DAMNED ARE NOT PEOPLE ANYMORE SO THEIR DAMNATION DOESN’T TROUBLE THE SAINTS

Apologists for the indifference theory claim that the damned are not persons anymore but kind of shadows and so are not entitled to be cared about. “The damned are like ashes, not like wood. They have lost their true reality. The blessed in Heaven, like God, do not mourn over what the damned once were – real wood, real men and women - because they do not live in the past” (Handbook of Christian Apologetics, page 272). This is a terrible and deceptive answer. The damned are either real or not. There are no in-betweens. If they are not real then instead of people being punished in Hell we have something preposterous like corpses being flogged for some crime that they committed when they were alive. But this is not punishment. Whipping corpses is not hurting the persons they used to be. If everlasting punishment is true then the damned are persons and there is no excuse for saying that they ought to be treated as non-persons or may be. Perhaps the damned have no memory which is one way in which they might be like corpses. Then their pain would be experientially the same as a person just having it for a moment and forgetting. That is what it would be like to them. But what use is punishing or retribution unless the memory is clear? And besides memory or not they are still suffering as they would if they had memory.

The claim that the damned are not really people anymore is supposed to be inferred from the words of Christ to the damned, “I never knew you” (page 271). It is denied that these words prove that Christ was not God and not all-knowing like God so they say instead that Jesus never knew the damned for they were just shadows and so unreal so he means he did not know them as real people but only as unreal things. But a sinner is as real as a saint and Jesus is not talking to damned people here but to people who were about to be damned.
 
I never knew you means you were never friends of mine. The word you shows that Christ was addressing persons not shadows of persons.

USING LONELINESS AS AN EXCUSE FOR AGREEING WITH SUFFERING IN HELL

The Church has always taught that the worst loss in Hell is the loss of God. Only persons can experience that utter loneliness. The loss being the worst means that it hardly matters if the fire of Hell is not literal for its pain would be nothing compared to the loss of God. Sister Faustina taught that after her visit to Hell she learned that the loss of God is the worst torment and the second is the perpetual remorse of conscience and the third is that one's condition will never cease and the fourth torment is the fire. If the damned regret their sins and have remorse and if they are so annoyed that their condition will never cease then clearly God is making them stay there whether they wish to reform or not. The Church says that God has made us for himself and we suffer without him. Jesus reflected this teaching in his command to love God which he said was the most important commandment of all and even more important than loving yourself or your neighbour. The damned then must desire God far more than us living people do! If the loss of God is their worst torment then that bothers them more than suffering forever! An honest God would make us desire him like that now instead of waiting until we die. If the damned are really so bad, their worst torment will be the thought that they have to suffer forever. Selfish souls will not be mourning the loss of God but worrying about their suffering.
 
The Handbook is just spouting nonsense to cover up the malignance of Christians who believe in Hell.

Believers want to go to Heaven and be at peace there with how others are suffering in Hell. They know that they may feel a reasonable level of happiness in Heaven forever while the damned would do literally anything for a tiny piece of it or even a very dull happiness. If the agony of the damned was happiness it would be higher and more important than their happiness for it is stronger. But it is not happiness. It is torture. The happiness should be sacrificed if possible to spare the damned.

The believers want to be at peace in Heaven and one of the things they want to be at peace with is the agony of the damned. Loneliness is allegedly the greatest pain of Hell for the damned has lost the God he needs. But it is a fact that no justice system can remain just and want people to be lonely. Nobody can deserve that. And you cannot inflict it on yourself directly. It is possible that a person should be lonely and are not. Recluses can be very happy. Loneliness is down to your genes not down to the lack of company. So if the damned are all lonely God is making them that way. Thus even if the damned suffer in Hell you cannot be at peace with their loneliness. 

Any suggestion that the happiness of Heaven is not affected by any sorrow you have for the suffering of the damned is nonsense.  It has to be.  The notion that they have to be big and disciplined enough not to let it mar their happiness implies they do indeed succeed in becoming rather heartless.  Hell is no flippant matter so being upset by people going there is natural and right.

FINALLY

Christianity claims to be a religion of love. That is a lie. If you go to their Heaven and end up not caring if ten year olds are suffering in Hell then you are evil for all eternity. That is a lot of indifference. Loving people on earth means nothing if you are going to spend eternity being indifferent to those in Hell. Earth life is short but eternity is unlimited and forever.



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